Big data systems are changing the way the world’s enterprises operate, and how they do PR and marketing. Although the impact made by the technology is tremendous, it’s still in its infancy, but maturing rapidly and poised to disrupt operations and marketing efforts across the continuum of industries and fields.
Marketing and PR is Changing
It’s important for today’s enterprise leaders and entrepreneurs to understand how big data technology is impacting businesses. It’s becoming a permanent staple in the business environment. In the public relations (PR) and marketing fields, experts are learning how to use the technology in beneficial ways. Resultingly, today’s PR and marketing experts must adapt and learn how to use this innovative resource.
Originally, PR professionals worked solely to sway public opinion. The field was riddled with unscrupulous practices such as false advertising and promotions. Today, reputable public relations professionals use data to prove points and promote ideas. Big data technology helps them to market to targeted groups with focused media campaigns. Using the technology, public relations and marketing experts can unearth detailed stories about any product or service, and businesses are listening to the tales told by this remarkable innovation.
Here are 4 more ways that big data technology has transformed the PR and marketing fields.
Transformation 1: Creative Innovation With Data Displays
Information experts use technology to display big data reports in meaningful, creative ways. They’re increasingly using advanced visualizations, infographics and other visual media to present data in a way that consumers and business leaders can understand.
The way that the human mind works with visualizations helps decision-makers easily identify the meaning behind reports, identify trends and pick up on errors and inconsistencies. Visualizations help business leaders make sense of complex data sets and provides them with a powerful advantage. Even simple pie charts and bar graphs help people understand a large amount of information quickly and easily compared to written reports or spreadsheets. They allow big data specialists to portray information in a unified way so that others can extract value from the resulting reports.
Transformation 2: Creating a Need for New Skills
Big data is changing how enterprises operate. Information technology (IT) departments gained importance in the business world in the 80s and 90s. Today, they are the driving force behind business productivity and growth. Reports are only useful if people can use them effectively. Companies need big data experts with business skills to find trends in information and turn them into opportunities. There’s a relatively new and growing demand for the specialists, even those with backgrounds in seemingly unlikely fields such as psychology and writing. Industries that have a ton of data are now actively hiring psychologists to help them make sense of it.
Transformation 3: Accurate Predictions and Analysis
Enterprises use big data systems to forecast consumer behavior, analyze trends and discover future opportunities. Business intelligence reports give enterprise leaders in-depth insights into their operations. In today’s high-tech business landscape, business intelligence goes hand-in-hand with big data systems. Before the emergence of big data technology, business intelligence was sparse. Today, business intelligence is a burgeoning field. It’s an invaluable resource that business leaders use to take their firms to the next level of success.
Transformation 4: Specific Hyper Targeting
To succeed, business leaders must know as much as possible about their target consumers. Effective target marketing is one of the primary major benefits of big data technology for enterprises. The technology has allowed enterprise leaders to create marketing campaigns that target consumers with amazing accuracy. While targeted campaigns formulated using big data technology aren’t always 100-percent reliable, they’re not far from it. The phenomenal accuracy provided by big data reports helps companies to forecast consumer wants and needs. In this way, the technology allows firms to predict what services and goods consumers might desire in the future.
The Internet is constantly evolving. Enterprises must be able to use these changes to their advantage. Public relations and marketing professionals find creative ways to use information and continual changes in the business environment to unearth opportunities. Having a diverse marketing and advertising strategy can help businesses grow better. A recent Newscred survey of U.S. marketers found that more than 91% of U.S. marketers agree with the statement “there is still room for growth in using more diverse images by marketers.”
Today’s enterprises collect an unprecedented amount of information. For many, it’s hard to decide what to do with it. Deciding what information is important and how to manage it can be a relentlessly challenging task. Public relations big data specialists who can help business leaders make sense of it all are transforming the business world. The practitioners are helping company heads keep up with the technology as it rapidly evolves and matures.
The value of big data technology lies not in the amount of information, but in the analytics and its ability to help business leaders understand their competition, consumers and internal operations and discover hidden opportunities. However, information alone does not result in improved organizational outcomes. Effective big data analysis requires the insights of a skilled professional who knows how to create meaning out of a mountain of information.